radio controlled

So you’ve got a really cool project that requires a wireless controller and a ton of different channels. What are you going to do? Are you going to go pick up an expensive RC controller? Nah, you’re going to build your own. This project makes a generic 20 channel controller for your projects by stuffing an SMDuino and an XBee module inside a ps2 controller. Unfortunately you lose the force feedback since you have to remove the motors to make space for the extra components and batteries. You do end up with a decently ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing controller though.

[Thomas Renck] recently picked up a 1000mW wireless video transmitter that he ultimately planned to mount in an RC plane. Before he strapped it on a plane to potentially kiss it goodbye for good, he wanted to play with it a while to see what it was capable of.

After a friend helped him determine the camera’s maximum range (about 1900 feet on open ground), he thought it would be fun to strap it on his nitro R/C truck. That didn’t work out so well due to some vibration issues, so he constructed a makeshift R/C car from the shipping box the camera arrived in, along with some other odds and ends.

As you can see in the video below, the propeller-driven “Boxmobile” zips along quite nicely. The video feed from the camera is pretty impressive too, allowing him to easily guide the car while it’s well out of sight.

At nearly $350, the self-proclaimed “ghetto-bot” is certainly not cheap, though we hear body repairs are a piece of cake!

[Dan] wrote in to share a project he recently finished up, an autonomous Airsoft tank. The toy tank makes use of a wide array of technologies to get the job done, and will stop at nothing to hunt you down (provided you are wearing an IR beacon).

An Arduino board is used to control the tank’s motors, while a Lego NXT module handles most of the other operations. The tank makes its way around using an ultrasonic sensor, which ensures it doesn’t get stuck on any errant furniture or hung up in a corner. While driving around autonomously is well and good, [Dan] upped the ante a bit by making the Airsoft turret completely autonomous as well.

He fitted a Wiimote IR sensor to the tank, successfully interfacing it with the NXT module after a bit of trial and error. Now that things are up and running, he can place his IR beacon anywhere in the room, and the tank will drive around scanning its surroundings until the target is found. Once the tank locks on, a flurry of Airsoft pellets take down whatever stands in its way.

We think that [Dan] did a fantastic job here, but see for yourself in the videos embedded after the break.

Here’s an odd little box that might get those creative juices flowing for the upcoming Halloween season. [Jeremy’s] creepy glowing box has a pair of ping-pong ball eyes which diffuse the red light from a pair of LEDs. Both the lid and they eyes move, and the whole thing is set up for wireless control.

The majority of the parts came from a toy RC helicopter that [Jeremy] had sitting in his junk bin. After close inspection he found that the electronics included to motor drivers for the two rotors, as well as two servo motors which worked to steer the aircraft. One of those servos has been repurposed to aim the gaze of they eyes left and right, the other servo is used to lift and close the lid of the box. This leaves the two motor controllers, one of which switches the LEDs on and off. The other doesn’t really have a purpose yet. He tried adding one wheel to the box, but turning that on just makes the whole thing crash to the floor. Check out what he’s done so far in the clip after the fold.

[lenny] decided to build a 555-based auto-firing mouse based on a 555 after seeing a similar PIC-based project we posted earlier. Lenny’s version is self-contained in one mouse without requiring a second mouse to act as the rapid-fire button. It uses only a handful of components, costs less than $5 to build, and doesn’t require any programming.

But then, [wfdudley] shakes things up a bit. He added a 4022 counter IC and some diodes to act as logical “OR” gates in order to create a unique blinking pattern (short-short-long) for the lights on a friend’s RC airplane. While this project involves more components, it’s definitely a trickier problem to solve with a 555 timer IC. We love seeing people choosing simplicity in design over popular off-the-shelf microcontroller frameworks as these two have done.

Don’t forget, the 555 Design Contest is still going strong, and you’ve got the entire month of February to submit your awesome designs. We wanted to highlight two of the more clever 555-based hacks that we’ve had in our backlog for a while, though.

[Samimy] has put together this really neat video tutorial on building a Radio Controlled secure hard drive. How can a hard drive be radio controlled? That’s the first thing we thought too. He has torn apart a remote-controlled car and is using the guts to remotely switch on power to the drive. This means that the drive is only active if you boot the computer after you put the fob in the hidden security system. It looks like it would be fairly effective. We’re curious though, if he is putting the entire drive assembly inside his PC, why rely on batteries for the circuit? Why not pull from the PC power supply? Another neat upgrade might be connecting to an internal USB connection on the motherboard so a reboot isn’t necessary.

[Leor] wanted to take some video of the wildlife in his yard, like this chipmunk or some hummingbirds, but every time he tried to get close it scared them away. His solution was to rig up a cheap video recorder to be radio controlled (PDF). The donor camera was a cheap SD card based eBay purchase that takes 720×480 video. [Leor] removed the SMD switches from the recorder’s PCB and wired up a 4066 quad bi-lateral switch IC in its place. An RC toy car donated the receiver transmitter pair. The receiver signals are monitored by an AVR microcontroller which translates the commands in a proper set of button presses for the video. What you get is a controller that and turn the camera on and set to the proper mode, and the ability to start and stop the recording.